End of Line
End of Line is an episode of the 2009 TV series Caprica. Based on the accompanying article in the show's ARG, "The Caprican", the events take place around 16 November 1942. Plot Teaser In a brief 20 hour flash forward, U-87 is driving a stolen van with police choppers in pursuit. Returning to the present, the U-87 is back in the Graystone Industries lab, observed by Philomon and Drew. Philomon tells him of 'Rachel' and how she altered her avatar to resemble Zoe Graystone. When Drew lights a cigarette, the U-87 twitches, the result of Zoe-A's traumatic experience in the fire a week before. The two scientists correctly assume the 'glitch' was caused by Daniel Graystone's recent tests. Daniel and Cyrus Xander meet and discuss their increasingly desperate predicament, needing 100,000 functional Cylons by the next month or their contract will be terminated. With Graystone Industries' stock shares going down 37%, Xander again begs Daniel sell the Caprica City Buccaneers, and he finally accepts the offer from Tomas Vergis. At the dock yards, Barnabas is waiting for a ship to arrive. He is soon approached by members of Sister Clarice Willow's STO cell, who are armed. Clarice accuses him of making direct contact with other STO cells to build a power-base, something she abhors as it both risks exposing everyone and threatens the Caprican branch's organisation under her leadership. His shipment has been halted after she was able to get her superiors to reconsider. Barnabas doesn't care much for Clarice's threats, as he understands the STO's command on Gemenon doesn't care for her Apotheosis project and wants more violence. Clairce strikes him and puts a gun to his head, but cannot pull the trigger as Barnabas' own men will respond. She warns him one final time to "toe the line", and leaves. Act 1 Cutting back to the future car chase, police tiltrotors are pursuing the stolen vehicle. The police wireless confirms they are aware the driver is the Cylon prototype, and have orders not to engage. Back in the present, Amanda Graystone reads old news articles relating to Graystone Industries winning the Caprican defense contract and the slaying of two workers at Vergis Corp. Some news sites report on rumours the MCP was stolen by Graystone Industries, confirming her suspicions. Still having hallucinations of her brother, Amanda phones up Clarice, hoping to seek more support, as she has not yet told Daniel her troubles. Clarice is short for time, as she has to go to Gemenon on a 'business trip', and Nestor cannot find her passport. She suggests Amanda tell her husband what's been troubling her. At the dock, Barnabas leads prayers around a candle-lit infinity symbol with the other STO members, with Lacy Rand now amongst them. As the group disperses, he keeps Keon and Lacy. He presents to Lacy the crate needed to transport what she needs to Gemenon, and has a green badge put on it, which means it has been pre-checked and declared exempt from further inspection. They must wait another week before shipping the crate, however, as the recent bump-up in GDD security means the badges will still be inspected by Caprica's customs officers. In exchange for the shipment, he asks her if she wants to join the STO. She agrees, and is given the mission of replacing the fob on her car keys so he can track her. She doesn't know why, and understands she isn't allowed to be told, but accepts the mission. Act 2 Sam and Evelyn find Joseph lying on his sofa on a Holoband. Having been there for some time, Sam becomes concerned Joseph is wasting his life there to escape from reality. Inside V-World, 'Rachel' and Philo relax on a bed floating in a pond. They talk again about her idea of giving the U-87 exposure to the outside world to better learn its environment. Philo better understands her idea than he did earlier, but is sure it isn't allowed. He further expresses concern that if his analogue technique goes nowhere, the team will have to do something more radical. At school, Lacy waits for Clarice to pass by before entering her office. She quickly looks through her handbag to get her keys. Though she accidentally knocks papers off the table, she has enough time to complete the mission. Daniel Graystone shows Colonel Patel the lab. He does his best to bluff how successful the project is, and that the lack of any more than one working Cylon is simply because he wanted to get the best results out of the first prototype before committing to copies. He is warned that the Caprican military knows full-well the MCP was stolen from Vergis Corp. and that it is believed he cannot replicate the initial success because he has no idea how to replicate it. The deadline is moved to next week on the understanding that the military wants the MCP theft to be forgotten about as quickly as possible. Act 3 In New Cap City, Tamara-A finds one of her signature Ts has been put up in her new home. She realises someone is in the house and finds Emmanuelle. Emmanuelle tells her she is a friend of her father. The two talk over the recent goings-on. Though she initially suspects Emmanuelle to be lying, she is moved by the claims Joseph's desperation to find her led him to miss Willie's ink day and develop an Amp addiction. Emmanuelle came alone because Joseph simply would not have been able to find her with these distractions. At the lab, Philomon suggests to Daniel Graystone that by carefully focusing on the analogue aspects of the MCP chip, they can successfully create more Cylons within two weeks without causing any problems to the U-87 prototype they have so far, in what he considers a "psych profile". As they only have one week, Daniel suggests irradiating the chip to destroy the anomalous elements, with copies of it being made starting the following day. Philomon insists that cannot be done, as all the unique behaviours of the Cylon will be lost in this process. Daniel sees these anomalies as tumours to be removed, and that behaviourally-unique Cylons are irrelevant to their goal. He threatens Philomon with dismissal if he doesn't irradiate the chip. In V-World, Zoe-A discusses the new changes to the plan with Lacy. At 10PM, Philomon is scheduled to leave the lab and meet 'Rachel'. She wants Lacy to meet him in the real world, posing as Rachel. As Zoe-A already told him she looks differently to her avatar, he will believe Lacy. She is then to stun-gun him and then enter the company building to rescue the U-87. Lacy cannot commit to it, as she needs a full week. Zoe-A accuses her of betraying her the same way she did the original Zoe, and reveals that her father intends to destroy the chip in the process of copying it, which will likely kill her. In the real world the process begins, and she de-rezzes. While Daniel is cutting up peppers, Amanda dresses up for going on, then looks at old Eros Day cards from him. Rather than go out, he welcomes her to a dinner he is preparing instead. Amanada asks Daniel if he remembers how she was when they first met, and how he told her she could always trust him to be himself. She reveals to him what Tomas Vergis said when he visited. Daniel can't give a yes or no answer about the theft and deaths, which gives her all she needs to know and she leave the table. Joseph Adama enters a house in New Cap City, having been told by Emmanuelle to come there. Taking more Amps, he quickly finds Tamara-A in the dark, and she shows herself. Tamara-A is concerned about Joseph and his obsession with finding her. Seeing he really is taking Amps, she wants him to leave and forget her rather than waste his life online. To force closure onto him, shoots herself in the chest with a gun. As he doesn't know about her digital immortality, he thinks she is about to die. She then shoots him dead and he de-rezzes. Emmanuelle has seen the whole thing, and takes off her Holoband, revealing herself to be Evelyn. Evelyn is in Joseph's apartment and quickly consoles him. At the lab, Philomon prepares to remove the chip for irradiation, but Zoe-A speaks through the U-87 and begs it not happen. She reveals herself to not only be 'Rachel', but that she is Zoe Graystone herself, and that she needs to flee to Gemenon to escape her father after originally being put in the robot. Zoe-A asks he store her in the truck so she can hide for the week, and he agrees to help her. However, this is a ruse and he sets off the security system. In an attempt to stop him, the U-87 throws him out of the way of the monitor, but in doing so smashes his head against a pillar, killing him. She then takes off in a van and drives out of the building. Act 4 Philomon's body is taken out of the lab as Daniel and Xander assess the situation. They believe the U-87, artificially sentient as it is, perceived Philomon's actions as a threat to its life and killed him. The van is already a considerable distance away but is being tracked. It must not be damaged or nothing can be salvaged. Xander warns Daniel that the military believes this to be proof the company has lost all control of the project. Daniel heads home and plays the piano to recover, looking on at photographs of Zoe. As Xander warned, the military has indeed lost all faith in Graystone Industries, and Colonel Patel gets out from a meeting with Tomas Vergis where he is assured he will inherit the U-87 contract if he takes over the company. Out in the city, Amanda Graystone walks around the streets on her own. She looks up from a park bench to Pantheon Bridge. Walking up on it, she takes off her shoes, climbs to the side and jumps off the bridge. Nearby, Clarice and Nestor are heading to the spaceport bound for Gemenon. Clarice hopes that her visit to the STO leadership will authorise the assassination of Barnabas. When she spots a woman standing on the bridge, she realises it is Amanda and gets out of the car as she jumps. Simultaneously, at the dockyards, Lacy interrupts the final stage of Barnabas' unsanctioned operation when she wants him to speed up the crate shipment. He reveals to her that, with Keon's expertise, the STO cell has placed a bomb in Clarice's car hidden in the trunk. The fob Lacy planted has been modified by Keon to pick up a phone call, then send a signal to detonate the bomb. Barnabas wants the bomb to blow up and kill a number of people to make it look like a planned suicide bombing. The operation hits a snag when the wireless connection goes down, but Keon is able to access a CCTV feed of the bridge itself, showing Clarice's car stuck in traffic. Barnabas hands Lacy a mobile phone to prove her devotion to the cause. When she resists, he puts a gun to her head and threatens to have her executed. He then points the gun at Keon, wanting her to see him die before her own if she fails. Lacy gives in and detonates the bomb. Barnabas does not realise no one is in the car, however. The stolen van drives over another bridge far away from Caprica City. Alpha Company has set up a road-block reinforced with bulldozers, and a platoon has been placed in front of it with orders to disable the van so the U-87 can be retrieved. Zoe-A stops the van when she spots the road block. She starts to cry, and realises she has no choice. The U-87's foot presses firmly down on the accelerator, and the van spreads towards the roadblock. The platoon runs to either side of the road, realising what is to come. The van crashes into the roadblock and flips over in the air, exploding as it hits the ground. Zoe-A's life flashes before her eyes during the whole ordeal. Back at home, Joseph gets a phone call about what has happened to Amanda. Production Writing Michael Tyler wrote End of Line alongside Ghosts in the Machine. The idea of the U-87 driving the truck down a highway was an idea he had at the start of the series. It was to originally to be longer and more of a journey for Zoe-A, with Tyler taking inspiration from the 1971 film, Vanishing Point. This is still seen with the idea of Zoe driving into a roadblock reinforced by bulldozers. This episode would have continued on from the gaslighting plotline from the last episode, but complaints from Paula Malcomson about the story idea meant that those scenes were cut out from Ghosts in the Machine, and never filmed in End of Line. An earlier idea for the episode was to have Sam join Joseph in V-World and actively work with Evelyn to help end his brother's crisis, by having Sam change the avatar to be a copy of Tamara, so that she could die in front of her father. In the finished episode, only Evelyn is in V-World, and the Tamara who gets shot is Tamara-A. This was cut out because it reminded the staff too much of the gaslighting subplot. An effort was made to stop Philomon dying in this episode as actor Alex Arsenault had become quite popular on set. Directing This episode served to signify the change in role of Sister Clarice Willow. While earlier episodes dealt more in her family life and as a comic relief character, End of Line put Clarice into more of a traditional villain role. Actress Polly Walker injured her back during the sequence where Clarice hits Barnabas. Because Eric Stoltz was scripted to touch the U-87 in a scene, a Cylon prop was used rather than using CGI over a pole or paper cutout as done in earlier episodes. This represented an improvement over Battlestar Galactica, which failed to gain Cylon props across all four seasons. Deleted scenes * In New Cap City, Joseph walks down a street, wearing sunglasses. He finds Emmanuelle waiting for him. He takes more Amps, despite her insistence it's addictive. She asks if he has had a decent night sleep recently. He moves off, and talks about finding a powerful gang to ask about Tamara. He finds Sam has joined the game to help him, and assumes Emmanuelle figured out how to recruit Sam in the real world. Joseph is still insistent on finding Tamara-A, explaining he hasn't been able to sleep or eat since he last saw her, and he has to find her to end it all. Emmanuelle points downstairs to Tamara-A being dragged into a building and slapped by a gang. Joseph insists the three go inside to save her. * Inside the gang's headquarters, Emmanuelle, Joseph and Sam are brought in. The gang leader recognises Joseph as the supposed father of the "dead girl". Emmanuelle offers Joseph in exchange for Tamara-A, claiming Joseph may pay real world currency. A gunfight starts up, and while Joseph is able to untie Tamara-A, she is shot and de-rezzes. Joseph wonders how she could die like this, Emmanuelle saying she must have been waiting for him. Sam, still 'alive' in the game, watches as his brother cries. * Joseph heads to the Apollo Park, which has been updated to reflect where the Maglev bombing memorial has been moved to. He puts a flower by Tamara's picture, as Sam and Emmanuelle look on. Sam thanks her for hiring the gang and a Tamara-A impersonator to do such a realistic performance. He asks if Tamara herself really is there, but she says she is merely a ghost. Sam hopes their deception will save Joseph. Emmanuelle de-rezzes, as the real Tamara-A looks down from a balcony to her father. She also begins to cry, but cannot let him know she's around, and walks away. * An extended version of the Vergis-Patel meeting has her reveal she doesn't like Tauron food. He offers her a lift after being assured the contract, and heads home in his limo. Credits Sources External links * Category:Caprica episodes